Past, Present and What the Hell?
by Missie2
Summary: Shayera finds herself in the most ridiculous of situations and John finds himself recalling things long forgotten... this will be both funny and sweet. Trust me.
1. Chapter 1

Past, Present, and What the Hell?

Apologies first of all for the stupid title. I had this idea for a while. It's inspired by Urusei Yatsura, which is a constant source of zany amusement for me. I also may have borrowed elements of Yotsuba! Read both if you can, they rock!

I don't own the Justice League, but I do own the stuff I made up. Touch it and I sue! (Just kidding.)

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The day was sunny and clear, and many a person had taken themselves to the beach for the day. Of course, this didn't matter on the planet Corgina in the seventy-second quadrant, since the planet had no sun. It had seven close stars that warmed the surface of the planet. There were no nice days on Corgina.

Rgat Termi, son of the esteemed Glocker Termi, was reading a newspaper. Corgina was so far away from other planets that it took a long time for the residents to get the news. That's why the newspaper Rgat was reading was a year old. It had the details of the Thanagarian invasion of Earth. The headline read "Thanagar invasion plot foiled at last minute."

Just under it, a picture of Shayera Hol was accompanied by the title "Traitor's wedding may be called off."

Rgat crumpled up the paper with fury. "That bitch!" he hissed.

…..

Meanwhile, at the Watchtower, Shayera was acting rather strange. Kind of nervous. And she was sneezing an awful lot.

"You know," said Supergirl, handing her a tissue, "if you sneeze more than three times in a row, someone must be talking about you."

"Great," Shayera muttered. "Just when I was starting to think everyone had stopped talking about me."

She sneezed again, and massaged her temple with her fingers. It just wasn't natural to sneeze thirty times in less than an hour.

"Maybe you should lie down," Supergirl said sympathetically. "You could have bird flu or something."

Shayera attempted to glare at her for the poor taste joke, but her head was pounding too much. She went to her room to lie down, sneezing five times on the way there. Once inside, sprawled across the bed, she found she just couldn't relax. She had a strange feeling something terrible was going to happen. With a long-suffering sigh, she did something she hadn't done since she was five.

She hid under the bed.

…..

Meanwhile, in the monitor womb, J'onn Jonze was watching the approach of the strangest looking spaceship he'd ever seen. It looked like a hollowed-out turnip with a top hat and it was so small it was hard to imagine anyone could fit inside. But J'onn was nothing if not composed, and he watched the ship's approach impassively.

There was a beep on the radar, and he left the screen to check it out. It displayed the approach of several other foreign bodies, crowding the little green screen like a hive of ants.

J'onn arched an eyebrow.

…..

John Stewart was thinking a lot about dogs lately.

On his last mission, he had had his leg thoroughly humped by the seeing-eye dog of the blind girl he had rescued on his last mission. Then the news had announced that the dog who had played Goldie in his favourite sitcom "Born into Splendour" had died. And then Vixen had complained all about how heiress Maxie Jerkin's tiny Pomeranian had pooped on the red carpet at some black-tie thing she'd been at and she'd stepped in it while wearing a ridiculously expensive pair of shoes.

All of this made him think of Lucifer.

Back in the days when John Stewart the Green Lantern had been known as Johnny Stewart from room 237 in building F, an old lady down the road owned a rather large, rather vicious dog. Its name was Lucifer at it was something of a legend in the area. Bobby Cooper had heard that it wasn't a dog, but the result of a genetic splicing of a wolf and a baboon. Shelly Jones heard that it broke into the bedrooms of kids who borrowed stuff from their siblings without asking and ate them. Carlos Jimenez said it was the devil's own personal guard dog, exchanged for the old lady's soul.

Whatever it was, it was freaking scary.

John found himself musing on Lucifer now, well into his twenties and after a lifetime of facing down aliens that were far scarier than a fat rottweiler with a gammy leg. Strangely enough, he found his memories of the stupid dog entwined with more pleasant, abstract memories. Whenever he thought of Lucifer, his mind supplied him with images of the local park's swing set, a high granite wall, a box of blackcurrant juice and a piece of cloth coloured a vivid terracotta. Which was all kinda weird.

His phone beeped, heralding the arrival of a text message. He glanced at it and sighed. It was a long, rambling, utterly pointless text message from Mari. Something about a gauzy hemline and a credit card and seven o'clock. For all his guff about not wanting to be destiny's puppet and his future being in his own hands, John couldn't help feeling like his relationship was somewhat forced. Sure, Mari was a model and a damn good superhero and exceptionally beautiful, but did she have to be so godawful _boring?_

It wasn't really her fault, he supposed. Being a model meant shutting off some of your most primitive urges just to get through a day's work. But just once in a while, every now and then, he wanted to see a little spark from her. He couldn't even tempt a temper tantrum out of her. Not like Shayera. Now there was a woman who gave good anger…

He shook his head, much like a dog with a flea. And there it was, his inexplicable urge to compare his current girlfriend to his last girlfriend. It popped into his head every few minutes, much as he tried to ward it off. Even if it hadn't exactly lasted long, his fling with Shayera had been exciting. You never quite knew what would happen next.

Some garbled shouting caught his attention and he walked out onto the bridge, looking down at Superman, J'onn Jonze, Green Arrow and Vigilante argue with a strange-looking alien. It was lilac-coloured with red spots and a portly body, topped off with a head that looked like a diseased cabbage. It seemed to be quite upset. Some of the other League members were also watching curiously from the bridge.

Then Shayera arrived, being pulled by the arm by Supergirl and sneezing uncontrollably.

"Seriously, you have _got _to see this! It's so weird!" Supergirl giggled. Shayera sneezed in response.

Supergirl pointed at the alien, who was now vigorously shaking Vigilante by the collar. Then things got interesting. Shayera suddenly went white as a sheet, and then kind of…grey. All over, even her clothes lost colour. Supergirl looked perplexed and attempted to lay a hand on her shoulder, only to discover Shayera had fled, leaving behind a Shayera-shaped cloud. It fell apart as Supergirl waved her hand through the smoke. John watched this display with interest.

Yep, you never knew what was going to happen.

…..

An hour later, three more irate aliens joined the first in the lobby, shouting angrily in their native languages.

Two hours later, there were twenty-three .

Three hours later, the number was fifty-seven.

By five o clock that evening, there was no telling how many there were. Someone had valiantly attempted to do a head count, but had to give up when it was discovered that some of them had more than one head, and others had no heads at all. They all yelled in a variety of languages, but for the ears of anyone just listening it sounded like they were just shouting the word "rabble" over and over again.

After another hour, order was restored. Superman attempted to ask the aliens what they wanted.

"Do any of you speak English?" he yelled over the sea of heads.

"YES!" they all yelled back.

"Okay…uh," Superman stuttered, not really knowing how to proceed. "So, what do you all want?"

"We want Hawkgirl!" yelled someone.

"Yes, Hawkgirl!" yelled another.

"Bring us Hawkgirl!" yelled another.

"_Hawkgirl, Hawkgirl, Hawkgirl!_" the crowd chanted in unison.

"Great. More bounty hunters. Let's just hand her over this time!" snarled Diana.

"I want a drink," called a lone voice from the crowd.

"Me too," agreed someone else.

"_Drinks, drinks, drinks!"_ they all yelled together.

"Get them their drinks and get them out of here," whispered Batman, almost too low for anyone to hear.

"Shouldn't we get Shayera out here? Where is she anyway?"

…..

Supergirl knocked on Shayera's door. No answer. She knocked again. Still no answer.

"Shayera? There's a whole bunch of aliens in the hall looking for you. What's the deal?" she asked. After about a moment, she got a somewhat muffled answer.

"Tell them I'm dead!"

Supergirl blinked. Why would Shayera want anyone to think she was dead?

"I can't tell them that!" she answered. "What do they want?"

"Never mind! Tell them I'm dead! Tell them I'm in a forbidden dimension or I morphed into pure energy or something! I don't care what you tell them, just don't tell them I'm _here!_"

Supergirl's eyes widened in delight, the kind of delight usually reserved for finding out that a rival has gained weight around the lower torso.

"Shayera… are they bounty hunters? I had no idea you were that famous!"

"No…they're worse."

Batman slunk out of the shadows just then like a nasty cloud of smog. Supergirl stepped out of his way nervously. He rapped quietly on the door and spoke in his trademark hushed voice.

"Come out of there right now and face the crowd," he growled. Like a mangy dog.

"I'd like to see you make me," she shouted back.

Batman cracked his knuckles.

Minutes later, he was dragging her down the corridor by her ankles as she tried desperately to grab onto something. Supergirl skipped along behind them.

…..

"Rabble, rabble, rabble!"

The crowd had been rabbling for quite some time, and the noise was getting very annoying. Then they all fell silent as Batman dragged Shayera out to the bridge and stood her up in front of them. She stared, horrified, at the crowd. They stared right back.

"It's Hawkgirl!" shouted the tall blue alien in the far left corner.

"Yes, Hawkgirl!" agreed the six-eyed one in the middle that bore a remarkable resemblance to Wyclef Jean.

"Rabble, rabble, rabble, rabble…"

"Shut up!" Shayera shouted into the crowd. "None of you have any reason to be here! Just get lost!"

"That's not true!" a Klingon shouted back.

" I've been looking everywhere for you! You ran off before we could come to an agreement!" shrieked a Tuskan Raider.

"There was no agreement we could have reached. Now just get out of here! And that goes for the rest of you too!"

The aliens all cast furtive glances at each other, except of course for the ones that had no eyes. Then a familiar looking girl with orange hair, cat ears and an entirely inappropriate tiger-striped furry bikini waved at her.

"Hello dear!" she trilled. Hawkgirl groaned and massaged her temple with her fingers.

" Cheshire Cat, what are you doing here?" she asked, though she feared the answer.

"Well, I was just curious, dear. So which one of these fine men are you going to marry?"

Every League member in the building at the time stared incredulously at Shayera. Shayera prayed for a bolt of lightning to just strike her dead. And the crowd of aliens started to chant.

_"Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!" _


	2. Chapter 2

Past, Present and What the Hell?

Chapter Two

Apologies for not working on this. My love affair with several of my previous fandoms has been rekindled and I might be working on some other stuff. But I'll try and finish this stuff first.

By the way, later on we will have an appearance by the mysterious Shy-chan. She's ridiculously cute.

…..

The doors imbedded in the corridor flew by as Shayera was dragged from the foyer to the conference room. There, she was pushed into a chair and stared at by the League members while Superman opened and closed his mouth, trying to find words to ask about what had happened.

Finally, he just pointed his finger in the direction of the foyer and asked;

"What the hell was that?"

She took a deep breath, and answered him.

"Those are my fiancées. They finally tracked me down."

"Fiancées?" Diana exploded. Her face was as red as beetroot. "All of them?"

"Yes. All of them," Shayera mumbled. It was all so embarrassing…

"So it wasn't just Hro you were cheating on…" muttered John. Shayera shot him an evil look out of the corner of her eye.

"I wasn't cheating on anyone," she hissed at him. "I didn't get engaged to anyone. They all got engaged to me."

"How is that even freaking possible?" Diana yelled at her. Her face was an unflattering shade of purple.

"Well…" Shayera began.

…..

The mating rituals of the alien races of the outer planets are many and varied, like a jungle full of thousands of different species. Major Hol, father of one Shayera Hol, was responsible for travelling to these distant places to document these strange customs. On many occasions he was accompanied by his aged father and his young daughter.

Leaving either one of his dependants alone was a bad idea, since Shayera tended to get in trouble with great ease and Mr Hol Snr had a gambling problem and a terrible memory. However, he was often required to leave them both in the planet's embassy for their own safety. Shayera would go play with the local children and Hol Snr would find some sort of betting game somewhere.

On the planet Miryong, hitting someone upside the head with the first appendage on your left side was a proposal. Shayera did this on the second day of her being there, when the son of the local chieftain accidentally (maybe) touched her rear end. On the neighbouring planet Mirtong, the person in question must be hit upside the head with the first appendage on the right side. Shayera did this to three different people within minutes of arriving.

Hol Snr tracked down a betting game at almost every planet they stopped at, and he tended to run out of money pretty quickly. Once that happened, he bet the one commodity he still had with him; his granddaughter. Many of these planets had few enough females so Shayera was accepted as a valuable prize. Luckily for the girl, they often left the planet before she could be claimed as collateral.

As years went by, Shayera acquired a number of fiancées. Her father was an impatient man who could never be expected to hang around a courtroom for the length of time it took to dissolve such agreements, so most of the time he skipped town with his rebellious relatives trailing along behind him. It was said that the antics of the junior and senior Hol had driven poor Major Hol into early retirement with a head full of pure white hair.

…..

John found himself wandering around the Watchtower three hours later in a daze. He was finding the news about Shayera's multiple engagements hard to take. Finding he was sleeping with another man's fiancé had been bad enough but this… this was ridiculous!

Fire walked by him, arm in arm with a Dalek. Or rather, arm in plunger-like appendage. As it attempted to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, it only succeeded in screeching with its cheese-grater-on-a-blackboard voice. Nevertheless, Fire giggled and blushed. The aliens were due to leave the next day, since an emergency intergalactic court hearing had been scheduled with those giant head guys that had tried John for destroying that planet that he hadn't actually destroyed. Unfortunately, that meant they all had to stay the night in the Watchtower. Anyone who had a home on Earth was required to vacate their room to give to an alien visitor. Shayera had been locked in the women's bathroom to prevent her from escaping.

Something was bugging John. He couldn't put his finger on it. He couldn't figure out why the arrival of hundreds of aliens reminded him of something from his childhood. Even so, every time he thought of the problem, he remembered the searing heat of springtime in his old neighbourhood, the smell of gasoline and hot dogs and the stern words of his mother before he left for school in the morning.

"_If you play hooky from school, God himself will send down an angel to beat some sense into you!"_

His mother, being a single mom and very hard-working, never minced words. He spent the first few years of his life being terrified of angels coming down from heaven to beat the crap out of him for some transgression or other.

"Why am I thinking about that now though?" he thought to himself. Then, he got that prickly feeling people sometimes get when they know someone's watching them. He turned around.

J'onn Jonze was eyeballing him with those eerie red eyes of his. John stared back, confused. Why was the Martian watching him?

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

After a few moments of staring at each other in silence, John walked away, totally creeped out.

…..

"Case number one: The legion of Panzerto M'ckna vs Shayera Hol!"

The giant female head on the left glowered at Shayera, who sat alone in the dock. She was too busy staring at the barbed wire around the dock wall to notice. Did they put that there especially for her? She had no lawyer, since they'd all been hired by the visiting alien parties. And with no lawyer, she had no right to speak in her own defence.

The bailiff walked in with a large, spiky, cumbersome…thing. He was approaching her with it. She started to feel very, very nervous.

…..

After catching J'onn staring at him yet again, John allowed himself to be dragged to Shayera's trial by a curious Flash. They fought their way through the phalanx of aliens and lawyers waiting for their hearings to the onlooker's seating area towards the back of the room. John found it brought back unpleasant memories of his own trial. Oh, well. At least he hadn't had his head strapped into that odd-looking contraption that was now attached to Shayera's cranium. The bailiff fiddled with the controls a bit, and then suddenly a grainy image of a young Shayera with a bunch of aliens appeared on a screen in the middle of the room.

The fourteen-year-old version of Shayera, John noted with some dismay, was jailbait. Dressed in a midriff-skimming pink top, red hotpants and what looked like cowboy boots, she was doing some sort of dance move that one of the aliens was showing her.

"Like this?" the girl onscreen asked as she did a high kick with her left leg.

"No, this way," said the alien, and he added a slight kink to the kick. "And touch your head at the same time."

The girl did it, missing the wide grin that lit up the face of the alien directly behind her.

"Hooray! She's my wife now!" the alien said in his native language. It was flashed in subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

Then the screen cut out. The three giant heads turned to the group of sheepish-looking aliens in the opposite dock.

"You tricked that girl," hissed the giant head in the middle.

"Your claim on Ms Hol is null and void. Get out of my courtroom. Next!" yelled the head on the right.

Shayera flopped forward, dazed. The Brain-Projectionator had a reputation for making the people who used it feel…odd. The bailiff hoisted her back into her seat and began to fiddle with the controls again. The second group of aliens had walked in.

"Case number two: Prince Mynder Goonja vs Shayera Hol."

…..

John and Flash stood outside in the foyer of the courthouse, unable to speak. They'd sat through twenty-five hearings, each one worse than the last. Twelve of the cases had been clear deception of a naïve young foreign girl and dismissed. Eight cases had been dismissed on the grounds that they'd been too close to slavery practices. The last five had been annulled for various reasons, such as the defendant being female, lack of witnesses and the like.

"She sure got around, didn't she?" Flash said at last.

"Yeah," John agreed. He was worried about her now. She had looked a bit grey when they left her, and there was a demented look in her eyes. Was that machine really okay to use for so long on one person?

"She was pretty hot back then, wasn't she?"

John scowled incredulously at Flash, who quickly backtracked.

"Not that she's not now, it's just… ah…," he trailed off, knowing he couldn't recover.

John just ignored him. J'onn had just arrived at the courthouse, and he was staring at John again.


End file.
